Editor's Introduction: Nature, Economy, and Equity: Sacred Water, Profane Markets

• Date: 01 November 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12168
• Published date: 01 November 2016

The AMERICAN JOURNAL of

ECONOMICS and SOCIOLOGY

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Volume 75 November 2016 Number 5

Editor’s Introduction:

Nature, Economy, and Equity: Sacred Water,

Profane Markets

In the following essay, Mason Gaffney has developed the first steps

toward a new framework for economics.

1

He avoids the usual

assumptions that deem it appropriate to ignore both nature and

society. He introduces a sacred dimension into his discussion, but

that does not entail giving nature the status of a deity or valuing

humans on the same level with microbes. Gaffney merely incorpo-

rates the value of nature from the start, not as an afterthought. He

also shows how the treatment of nature is deeply connected with

the treatment of humans. Abuse of one entails abuse of the other.

Environmental quality and social equity are interconnected.

In Gaffney’s framework, benefits from nature cannot be used pri-

vately unless the public is compensated for the loss, a principle

ignored in our present economic system. The key villains in Gaff-

ney’s story are economists, lawyers, and other professionals who

accommodate privatizers with clever doctrines that justify the ongo-

ing theft and hoarding of the gifts of nature. In the process, he

shows that the failure to integrate equal rights to nature into eco-

nomic and legal theory undermines the goal of efficiency.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 75, No. 5 (November, 2016).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12168

V

C2016 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.